Collection Preservation Tips

Information is provided on these pages which may be useful in the preservation and storage of your archival records and objects at home or in an archival storage situation, that may help to preserve your objects, documents and photographic records for future generations.

Book Preservation

Digitisation

One of the best means of preservation is to digitise collections - Digital Preservation allows the original object to be less impacted by handling. Once in a digital format the digital copies can be viewed instead of the original being handled. Read more about KHS's Digitisation processes, to build a digital archive, which was first started with an empty hard drive circa 2006, building on a few text format files that Margaret Lawson had typed up about the collection prior to 2003. From this handful of documents we now have about a Terabyte (1000 Gigabytes) of data as a digital archive in 2013. Go to the KHS Digitisation page.

Museum Object Preservation Video

Our friends at the WA Police Historical Society, the NT Police Museum & Historical Society, and others, will be interested to see the following video. KHS has been a member of the ArchivesLive (Australian Society of Archivists) web group for the past year. They recently sent an email with a link to an interesting video about collection storage, which is a great resource for showing a high standard of collection storage. Worth viewing for anyone, as an education on the high standards of collection storage and preservation to aim for, so have embedded the video here.

The video is in two sections; The first part focusing "On-Site at the Koori Heritage Trust Collection Store" and the other, "On-Site at the Victorian Police Museum Collection Store." The video(s) was produced by the Museums Australia, Victoria. (KHS is also a member of Museums Australia WA)

Water Damaged Documents and Photographs

Read about Water Damage to collections, concerning mould (or Mold) and links to YouTube videos on how to deal with water damaged collections, prepared by "Preservation Australia."

The
best thing to do is avoid water damage by preventive measures,
especially in flood prone areas. Have a disaster plan ready. Have all
your documents of significance in a ready state for evacuation.

Too late? - View the YouTube video links on Water Damage to collections, to learn how to deal with wet documents.

Try
and deal with wet documents quickly! Preferably within 24 hours of
being wet. If you cannot deal with them immediately you can put them
into freezer bags and freeze them until you get time to deal with them.

Metadata in Images

IMPORTANT for all collecting institutions in how to embed information about images directly into a JPG image file. What is metadata in images?

How to batch process to embed metadata into multiple images (follow the link above).

Because of the constant transient nature of Kununurra's population in
the past 50 years, KHS Archive, Library, Museum & Research facility
is actively seeking archives from past residents. If you have archival material in the way of photographs, documents, books or other objects, which you would like to be preserved locally for the future in KHS's purpose built archive facility, please Contact KHS.

19days since A Grave in the Long Grass - Remembering Them at the Kununurra Museum (See EVENTS Page for Details :^)- Officially Opens at 10am Saturday...

Remembering Them - A Grave in the Long Grass

This new exhibition opens at the Kununurra Museum on May 5th then ongoing.

This year of 2018 marks the centenary of the end of World War I and
these exhibitions were initially researched and devised locally, then,
with thanks to further research by the Royal WA Historical Society, the
panels were professionally designed with collaboration between each
Society (Kununurra & Wyndham) and staff of the WA Museum and Museums
& Galleries Australia WA. There is also a museum quality showcase
for each of the Kununurra and Wyndham Museums.

The Remembering Them project that has been in progress since 2014 (to
2018) to commemorate the 1914-1918 WWI centenary) has been generously
funded by Lottery West and the WA Government. Thanks go to the Army
Museum (Fremantle) WA for temporary display objects of the 10th Light
Horse (for Kununurra Museum), as well as the WA State Records Office for
images of the 'cancelled public plans' and the State Library of Western
Australia who supplied photographs (& plans) for use on the history
exhibition panels.

65days since "Wirraway Challenge Day" (March 20th) at the Kununurra Museum. In 2017 it was 75 Years since March 20th 1942, which was the date of the forced landing of RAAF 12 Squadron CAC Wirraway A20-62 on coastline near the WA-NT border. Broome and Derby suffered air raids on the same day, March 20th 1942.

1942

"Wirraway Challenge Day"

at

Kununurra Museum

March 20th 2018

RAAF 12 Sqn. CAC Wirraway A20-62

On March 20th 2017 it was...

75 Years...

...since the forced landing of RAAF 12 Squadron CAC Wirraway A20-62, on coastal saltmarsh, just inside the WA/NT border, by Pilots Lew Dwyer and Warwick Carmody. Watch the Digital Videos (DVs) from the KHS - "A Story of Survival & Rescue in the far north-east Kimberley"

Read & see more from the KHS "Wirraway - Challenge"Research Page (has links to all 8 parts of the DVs on the "Kununurra Museum" YouTube Channel OR See the permanent display at the Kununurra Museum.

1943

1943 (Dry Season)

75 Years Ago in 2018

Experimental Irrigation continues at Carlton Reach

Ord River Experimental Station

On March 31st 1941 Kim Durack published his paper, 'Developing the North - Proposed Research Station for the Kimberleys', and before the end of that year the
"Ord River Experimental Station," was established at
Carlton Reach using the waters of the Ord for irrigation. In 1942 agricultural experiments began with the first irrigation in June that year. 75 years ago in 1943 experimentation continued and widened, as shown in regular reports by Kimberley Michael Durack that we have in the archive. The station would operate on the Carlton Reach Site for five years and all would be moved to the Kimberley Research Station site in 1946.

More
information is available about the 36 HP Petters "Atomic" diesel pump
engine (Now at front of Kununurra Museum), used to raise the water for these first major experimental
attempts at irrigation, at the twenty acre farm site. available from the Carlton Reach Pump Engine (On this site)

In
April 2013 the 36 HP "Petters Atomic Diesel Engine" was donated to the
Kununurra Historical Society by the Department of Agriculture and Food
WA - Frank Wise Institute of Tropical Agriculture (formerly the
Kimberley Research Station, where the engine was also in use until the
1950s), KHS now has the original pump engine by the entrance
gate of the Kununurra Museum.

50 Years Ago - 1968

What was happening 50 Years Ago in Kununurra during 1968?

Add in a new section for 1968 in page (below) [?] or see what was happening in 1967 from the Research - 1967 in KHS Archives page, hilights some indexed records from the KHS archive as listed by former dedicated KHS Hon. Archivist for many years, Margaret Lawson. The index listing, made many years ago, does have some more recent KHS corrections and additions.

12days until KHS Inauguration Day - June 5th - Inaugural Meeting that resulted in the formation of the Kununurra Historical Society Inc. (KHS - Us! ;^) on June 5th 1986. In 2016 we commemorated 30 Years as a Society.

Events in 2016

Wyndham and Hall's Creek (aka "Kimberley") were established.

1886

130 Years Ago(In 2016)

WA-NT Border Determinations

It will be.. 100 Years

...in 2021Since the WA and SA Government Astronomers came to the Kimberley in 1921to determine the position of the WA/NT Border on the ground by using the new technology of the day (in 1921), of radio time signals. (Yes!, the pips you used to hear before the news! :^) This expedition in 1921 would determine the border position from time signals girdling the earth, from Greenwich UK, Annapolis USA, Applecross WA, SA Observatory & Lyons France - as in how many hours minutes and seconds east of Greenwich they were.

1927 - 100 Years ago in 2027

A WA Survey crew would come back in 1927 to build the Kimberley Obelisk, which still determines the border on the ground today.Read More about the 1921 WA/NT Border Determinations